Who’s Afraid of Greg Locke? A Call for Testimonies

This week, I had the extreme displeasure of listening to his sermon “Shake it Off.” I use the term “his” loosely because it seems he plagiarized the sermon from another Tennessee preacher. What he didn’t plagiarize was the vicious signal he sent from the pulpit to any congregant who would dare speak out against him. In his sermon, Locke called out a female congregant by name who has been critical of him on social media for his disqualifying actions. To quell additional criticism of his popular, public pastorate Locke loudly shouted “You think you’re nervous now? You wait till the next five or six names keep running their mouth and I’ll call them from the pulpit. Don’t you think I won’t. Don’t you think I won’t.”

Did that shut you up? Did that make you scared of losing your friends and drawing the ire of Locke’s thousands of Facebook followers?

You don’t have to be scared.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, not the fear of Greg Locke. You don’t have to be afraid of him. He’s not God’s anointed. He’s an entrepreneurial speaker who started his own church and started an internet “ministry” of preaching to the masses. When the internet masses find out that Greg Locke is divorcing his wife (a woman who has been reduced to taking refuge in a women’s shelter hundreds of miles from her children) and is now running around town with the church secretary, they can mark Locke and move on to another preacher. You can’t do that so easily can you, church member?

If you leave your church, you could be leaving your friends. These are the people you eat dinner with, play softball with, go camping with, watch the Super Bowl with…these are the people with whom you live your life. You don’t want to lose them, but you know what? You need to lose Greg Locke. He’s not fit to be your pastor. He’s not fit to be anyone’s pastor. In his sermon, he defiantly and ironically screams, “You’ve hired the wrong guy.”

But you didn’t hire him did you? He personally, not another church body (this according to Locke’s church website bio) founded the church…like any small businessman. It’s his. He needs you. He needs your money. You don’t need him. Tennessee if full of churches with qualified pastors. Why are you and your precious friends and family still at Global Vision?. Is it because he has you fooled? Is it because he has you in fear?

You don’t have anything to be afraid of; Greg Locke should be the nervous one. He stands before a Holy God as a pastor who is running around with the church secretary while his wife suffers in solitude. Given enough time, the truth almost always comes to light. Greg Locke knows this as much as anybody else. He’s still holding on; don’t let him hold onto you.

Raise your voice. Help his deceived followers. Don’t let him be the worldwide face of Christianity. Is he the face of a pastor you want lost people to see? Understand, we don’t like Target or Planned Parenthood anymore than he does. We aren’t liberals out to destroy a Christian voice, we are conservative Baptists out to further the cause of Christ.

If you’ve gotten beyond the fear of being yelled at from the pulpit by Greg Locke, write to us at talkback@pulpitandpen.org and tell us your Global Vision story. Let us be your megaphone. You don’t have to be afraid or alone. We are here to help.

Have nothing to do with the unfruitful deeds of darkness but rather expose them.

[Contributed by Seth Dunn]

*Please note that the preceding is my personal opinion. It is not necessarily the opinion of any entity by which I am employed, any church at which I am a member, any church which I attend, or the educational institution at which I am enrolled. Any copyrighted material displayed or referenced is done under the doctrine of fair use.